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In ethics and governance, accountability is answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private worlds. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.
In governance, accountability has expanded beyond the basic definition of "being called to account for one 's actions". It is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals, e.g. "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct". Accountability cannot exist without proper accounting practices; in other words, an absence of accounting means an absence of accountability.
History and etymology
"Accountability" stems from late Latin accomptare, a prefixed form of computare, which in turn derived from putare .
While the word itself does not appear in English until its use in 13th century Norman England, the concept of account-giving has ancient roots in record keeping activities related to governance and money-lending systems that first developed in Ancient Israel, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and later, Rome.
Types
Bruce Stone, O.P. Dwivedi, and Joseph G. Jabbra list 8 types of accountability, namely: moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, legal/judicial, constituency relation, and professional. Leadership accountability cross cuts many of these distinctions.
Political
Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and politicians to the public and to legislative bodies
In governance, accountability has expanded beyond the basic definition of "being called to account for one 's actions". It is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals, e.g. "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct". Accountability cannot exist without proper accounting practices; in other words, an absence of accounting means an absence of accountability.
History and etymology
"Accountability" stems from late Latin accomptare, a prefixed form of computare, which in turn derived from putare .
While the word itself does not appear in English until its use in 13th century Norman England, the concept of account-giving has ancient roots in record keeping activities related to governance and money-lending systems that first developed in Ancient Israel, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and later, Rome.
Types
Bruce Stone, O.P. Dwivedi, and Joseph G. Jabbra list 8 types of accountability, namely: moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, legal/judicial, constituency relation, and professional. Leadership accountability cross cuts many of these distinctions.
Political
Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and politicians to the public and to legislative bodies
References: Hunt, G. ‘The Principle of Complementarity: Freedom of Information, Public Accountability & Whistleblowing’, chap 5 in R A Chapman & M Hunt Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006. Hunt, G. Whistleblowing in the Social Services: Public Accountability & Professional Practice, Arnold, 1998. David Luban, Alan Strudler, and David Wasserman, “Moral Responsibility in the Age of Bureaucracy,” Michigan Law Review 90, 2348-2392.